Prevalence of Hoarding in an Adult Inpatient Population and Its Association With Axis I Diagnoses

Hoarding behavior is not limited to obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) alone. With the objective of highlighting the association between hoarding behavior and common psychiatric disorders, we explored its occurrence in psychiatric inpatients and co-occurrence with Axis I diagnoses.

In this prospective cohort study, we enrolled adult psychiatric inpatients by simple random sampling at an urban, community-based, academic medical center. Patients were screened for hoarding using the validated Hoarding Rating Scale-Interview, and those meeting criteria for clinically significant hoarding were assessed for Axis I disorders.

Clinically significant hoarding was observed in 33% of the 200 acute psychiatry patients admitted to the study. Mood disorders were positively associated with hoarding (p = 0.033), whereas psychotic spectrum disorders had a weaker association with it (p = 0.015).

This study indicates a need for clinicians to be mindful that hoarding manifests in many forms of mental illness and is not limited to OCD alone.